RE: Steemit Referral Program and Incentives.
I agree that it's hard to get going with the platfrom.
This is yet another reason in my opinion (though not at all suggested as a complete solution to the specific problem you are discussing here) to implement the idea I proposed earlier; Reward early supporters of good writers.
If a good writer comes on the platform and you were the one introducing them to Steemit, chances are you're gonna be among the first ones voting for them.
However if they don't get noticed as good writers (maybe because their first post isn't actually that advanced in nature and they just want to test things out, or because they're just one of the unlucky few that didn't get a whale welcome) then you will hardly be rewarded for this curation and as such there's an even greater "risk"/"cost" to voting for this new user, than voting for someone "safe".
That's why I suggest we reward early supporters in hindsight, as the next few couple posts start to rack up some dollars. That way we'd have a semi "referal like" program + we would further incentivize the entire community to vote for 1 "expected to be good writers" and 2 good content that may not get noticed, not simply out of the goodness of their hearts, but by putting the profit motive to work in a new way.
-To me this seems like good economics. @smooth @dantheman @anyone with more knowledge than me, tell me if I'm being too short sighted?
Sounds good to me, I am open to anything that will help us grow with a solid foundation.
What does this look like in application? Can you give the steps along the way, kind of an outline or flowchart?
Thank you for the idea. I will try to make a post about this and include something like that.
(although I could not give you the technical details of actual implementation in the blockchain, since I'm far from educated in that department)
Let me try to explain it like this though;
1 You vote for an "unknown" new blogger that just arrived on Steemit - or for a friend that just joined, thanks to your efforts.
2 The rewards are payed out as normal and maybe this time there is little to nothing given to this "good" new writer, though had they been on the platform longer or were a celebrity they would have been paid handsomely.* -Thus, neither did the voters so far get rewarded for the use of their votes and they may even experience some "pain".
3 In x amount of time after the first post, the average total payout on all posts made by the blogger would be automatically calculated.
4 This would prompt a payout to the original voters for the first post made by the blogger. -Thus reincentivizing those voters that had been feeling the pain of no initial rewards, to continue voting for unknown authors - or for those promising users they successfully onboard.
This is of course only a very brief explanation, but maybe the best I personally can do without making a post about it. There would be many parameters to consider before actual implementation.
*(Nothing wrong with celebs or verified users getting more money though, that's not the issue here. The issue is that a really good post could end up bein priced at nothing or "too little" and the really creative writer would end up with nothing other than a bad first impression; "Quality is not rewarded on this platform, only status". My idea primarily seeks to reduce this risk for the author, by reducing risk/increasing the chance of rewards for the voters.)
That's an interesting idea.
I'm not technically inclined either, so wouldn't know whether the benefits would justify the change. I will say that it's hard to get noticed in any field, regardless of the format. One has to pay their dues. I suspect that too many of us who saw large payouts a couple of months ago tend to expect to be able to do so today.
Having said that, topic specific curation is becoming more common as SteemTrail continues to grow. This means that it is much easier now to get recognized for excellent content in a curated Trail than it once was, regardless of one's "seniority" here.
I curate two trails right now. It's been difficult to find great content for them, though there's a lot of decent-to-good stuff out there. I sort according to tags rather than authors, then glean based completely on content. A couple of authors are almost always toward the top. Others get recognized once in a while, while some only seem to get one-time recognition.
These are upvoted and resteemed, as well as promoted elsewhere, including social channels. The impact right now is probably minimal, but the goal is for it to increase as the projects mature. And a couple of these articles are submitted to the main SteemTrail for curation, usually getting the added influence of the trail.
The current challenge for this model, right now, is monetization. How do you make enough to justify the intensity of the effort? The TRAIL token is designed to help with this, but isn't currently traded enough to make it particularly valuable. But if we were to bring in writers for our specific categories, promoting excellent content both on Steemit and through various channels, then receiving a commission of sorts on their added value would be a nice perk.
Without the tools in place, all this is just talk. Hopefully the best solution will be implemented and promoted soon.
Very interesting. In the long term I'd like to see most of the trails going away, but for now there is a lot of great work being done by those institutions. I know @kevinwong of Project Curie (@curie) has expressed similarly, that they don't want to continue forever.
I had not even heard of the TRAIL token. Is there somewhere I can read more about it?
The risk I see with creating coins is that we spend too little effort on integration.
My "Cooperative Agorism" is largely centered around this; Volountary "syndication" so to speak, to create stability and ease of use rather than splintering everyone into their own small isolated market where they can neither be seen nor heard.
Here you go.
Yeah, Curie is generalized. Once the wealth spread to a certain point, their efforts shouldn't be nearly as needed. That's a bit different than focusing on promoting specific topics. Maybe you've seen the Garden-Trail promoting articles for instance. It's something they understand and love, so they assemble the cream of the crop and promote them for greater visibility.
Consider that you're into cooking, as an example. You want to read as much about cooking as possible, so you'll look at the cooking tag. Then you wade through the articles, maybe 1/3 of which are actually good. Would it not make sense to have a location you could go to in order to find articles that were already deemed high quality by curators? And following such curators, at least the ones you appreciate or line up with most, will help promote good material, hopefully including from new authors.
Well, that's the thought process anyway. Motives may vary... :) There is some resistance. But I think it's somewhat inevitable that things will move in this direction as Steemit matures. Doing so can't really hurt anything, as far as I can figure. But it can go a long way toward promoting the site as a whole. Maybe there are holes I am not cognizant of though?
Too bad the platform limits where I can answer you lol so this might be confusing...
I'm in agreement with you. Trails are generally just an aditional service and can certainly be a very useful thing. It depends on application.
Curation guilds aiming to achieve a more "fair" distribution of payout though, to be specific, is what should go away with time. That shouldn't be necessary in my opinion. It seems to me that things should and hopefully will work very differently in the future than they do right now.
That is very interesting idea, actually. The benefit is not as direct but encourages the finding of new good creators, by early support indicating a decaying proportion of shared curation rewards, small but not insubstantial. It should decay in order to drive continued competition to find new users whose posts are regarded as good.
I think you could add something like this to the rewards distribution and it would keep people searching for new good stuff. The benefit could be substantial without having to be huge. Sorta like a bonus for early prediction accuracy. It does have some connection with prediction markets anyway, the whole curation thing. This would be a natural expansion of the basic princiole to add "before it was cool" as something you can have as a factor in calculating rewards. it would disadvantage trend following autovote whales too.
I agree! Thank you for the support!
Sorry it took some time getting back to you here, but I was tired when I first noticed the comment and for some reason my foreign brain couldn't get over the second sentence in your comment. Then I simply lost thought of it and it got burried in all the other comments I sent and recieved.
Yes, the expression "before it was cool" would probably be a much more digestable term for what I'm attempting to get at here, rather than my complicated "hindsight (averaged) rewards".
Yes, in simple terms curation is about those with the best eyes for the will-soon-be-cool. For that reason also the change to 7 day single payouts will make it work a lot better, the votes will have more time to digest. If you want everyone to get their voice, really since our lives run on weekly cycles this is the minimum for ensuring every eye that might vote, has the time. It will also get people hunting categories more too, less time pressure, better judgement...